Stuck
by Aerial312
Summary: What starts as an argument leads to an interesting conversation as Tony and Ziva are stuck in the elevator together.


Tony yelped as Ziva's fingers closed around his ear and twisted.

"What are you doing behind my desk?" she demanded.

Reading your email. Somehow he didn't think that answer would go over well. "I didn't hear you come in. Sneaky ninja," he smiled.

"You seem to think that using that nickname with affection will make me forget that you were at my desk, reading my email."

Okay, so that tactic didn't work. She released his ear and he rubbed it, trying to lessen the sting.

"Move," she demanded, still glaring at him.

He quickly got out of her chair, but lingered beside her as she closed out the email program and shut down the computer.

"So, Ray's back in town?"

She didn't answer, didn't even look at him as she gathered her bag and headed for the elevator. Fuck. Tony grabbed his own bag quickly and slid into the elevator just as the doors were closing.

Ziva sighed loudly as the doors hissed shut. "You could not just let me go?"

"No, I couldn't," he answered truthfully.

"Of course not," she grumbled.

"Why didn't you tell me Ray was coming back to town? I heard you on the phone…"

"Why didn't you just ask then?" she demanded. "When are you going to learn—" she cut off as the elevator emitted a horrible screeching sound.

"That's not good," Tony said, looking upward to where it seemed to be coming from. It was high pitched and sounded like metal on metal.

"No, it's not," Ziva agreed. The car shuddered to a stop. "We are between floors," Ziva noted quickly, eyes immediately scanning the space. The white lights flickered and went out, leaving them in the familiar, eerie blue emergency light. Ziva crossed to the button panel. She jabbed each button in succession, ending with flickering the emergency stop switch back and forth several times.

"Don't do that!" Tony told her.

"Why?"

"We don't know what the hell that noise was. Maybe its better that the elevator isn't moving."

"It is not."

"From the perspective of you have plans tonight it isn't," Tony teased. "From a mechanical perspective, it probably is."

"Oh, now you are an expert—"

"Ziva," he sighed. She huffed back to corner where she had dropped her bag. "I'm just saying that it might be safer to wait for the professionals. We don't want to plunge to our deaths."

"What professionals?" she asked angrily.

He held out his phone. "I'm going to call facilities."

She nodded sullenly.

He tapped a few buttons. "This is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. Agent David and I are stuck in the south elevator, between the first and second floor. It was an awful noise. Metal on metal. No, we have the emergency light. Oh…okay."

He hung up and turned to face Ziva warily. She wasn't going to like what he had learned. She was watching him closely with her hands on her hips. "What was that _oh_?" she asked, her voice somewhat less angry than before.

"Their control panel shows that there is a problem—"

"Obviously."

He smirked at her sarcastic tone. "The panel is showing a problem that they have to call the elevator service company about."

Ziva's face fell. "At 6pm on a Friday night?"

"They didn't seem to think it would be a problem. Twenty-four hour emergency service or something."

"But how long?"

"Didn't say."

Ziva scowled, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

"Through hunting for an escape?" he chuckled. He'd expected her to keep looking until he made her stop like she did the last time they'd gotten stuck together.

"There is not one," she sighed, pulling out her phone.

"You barely looked. There's a panel." He looked up at it.

"It does not open easily, and it would be difficult to get out of the shaft if the car is not near the second floor, which we are not," she explained simply. He sat beside her with a look of amusement. "You have forgotten that I spent almost twelve hours stuck in the elevator with McGee—"

"When we lost the power!"

"Correct." She turned her attention back to what she was typing on her phone.

Instinct—his misguided, nosy instinct—was screaming for him to lean in and see who she was texting. He resisted, but must have shown just enough interest that she turned to him with a sigh after she clicked send. She turned the phone upside down on her lap and looked at him expectantly. His brow furrowed while he considered what she wanted. Right. She wanted him to ask, not snoop.

"Is Ray back in town now?"

"You did not learn the answer from my email?" she asked bitterly.

"I'm asking."

"He is tonight, yes."

"Just tonight?"

"As far as I know."

"You had plans?"

"I did."

Tony sat back against the cool metal wall. He really didn't want to hear the details, particularly if Ray was only going to be available for one night.

"What?" Ziva asked, turning to him.

"Hmm?"

"You are scowling."

"I thought you were fed up with Ray," he couldn't help but say out loud.

"I am," she sighed, slumping against his arm. He sure didn't expect that. She sounded like she might continue, so he didn't say anything right away. He was so glad to hear that he wasn't mistaken about where things stood. "I want to know he is up to," she continued finally. "Because he is certainly up to something."

"Well, yeah, CIA is always—" Tony started to chuckle.

"He has been in Tel Aviv," Ziva growled.

"Yeah?" Tony asked, curiosity peaked.

"I received a phone call from my father about him this morning. he wanted to know more about," she made quotes with her fingers, "_this boyfriend of yours who works for the CIA_, that he had met."

"He met Ray?" Tony turned to her incredulously.

"He was not impressed."

Tony couldn't help but laugh. "Well, there's something I actually agree with your father about." Ziva nodded, with a slight smile. Then something dawned on Tony. "You said Ray was _working_ in Tel Aviv?"

"That is what he told my father."

"There is another branch of the Frankenstein Project that Ray was telling me about, back when all that was going down in May. Program assassins hired by foreign governments to assassinate high profile figures."

Ziva nodded bleakly. "They believe he was casing the place, under the pretense—" she growled, shaking her head in disgust, "of meeting his girlfriend's father."

"Your dad's got like super security, right?"

Ziva nodded. "Around the clock." She curled closer to Tony, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "He may be a bastard, but he is still my father," she said quietly.

He gave her a squeeze and dropped a kiss on top of her head. A while passed in silence, her cheek against his dress shirt, her fingers rolling a button back and forth. He traced half moons on her shoulder. Spending the evening trapped in the elevator with Ziva was more fun than watching the game at a bar alone, by a long shot, he realized. Her phone chimed in her lap. She read it and sighed, shaking her head against his chest. This time she held up the phone for Tony to read.

Earlier she had written:

_Stuck in the elevator._

_I do not know how long it will be._

_I had looked forward to seeing you._

That last part made Tony cringe even though he now knew she had been playing a part when she'd texted him earlier. The timestamp showed 20 minutes had elapsed before Ray responded:

_mtg ran late._

_being sent back immediately._

_will see you later my love._

Tony made a noise of disgust as he read that last part and Ziva chuckled.

"It is probably for the best," she told him. "I was tempted to confront him."

"Better you don't," Tony agreed. "Let him keep thinking you don't know anything, and Mossad take care of him."

"You sound happy at the prospect."

"If he is truly mixed up in things that awful…" Tony shrugged.

"If he's being sent back over there, I will likely not see him again," she said simply.

"They'll kill him."

"He will certainly have a tail from the Kidon unit. If he gets anywhere near my father…"

"Do you think he is the actual assassin?" Tony asked. Ray seemed the type to let someone else do the dirty work.

"Probably not. But he is the leader—"

"What about Kort?"

"They will eliminate anyone they see as a threat."

"Eliminate." She always had interesting word choice when it came to killing. "Threats are taken very seriously in Israel," she added, sitting up.

Tony nodded. He studied her for a moment in silence. "Something is troubling you."

She shrugged. "I do not like that he was able to play me."

"Not for long though, really. You didn't want to let him back in after you learned he was working with NCIS and hadn't told you. You haven't lost your touch," he smiled, tugging her back to him. She nuzzled in close. He knew she was still uneasy about the whole thing, and that she was going to be for a while.

"My father agreed when I told him what you said I should have told Ray to do with the ringbox."

Tony laughed, and kissed her head again, letting his lips rest on the top of her head.


End file.
